Being Reasonable

I was reading on social media this morning that 5 planets are in retrograde, and it occurred to me that my new way of thinking and planning by reason has influenced areas such as this, as well.  The post was saying that if you were feeling a little heavier than normal and more drawn to emotions, the retrograde was the cause.

I don't need planets moving to feel emotions, but I began removing control over my plans by my emotions a while ago.  I think it started when I was processing and realizing that allowing my emotions to take the wheel had led me to many difficulties and had cost me many things that were valuable to me.. again.. not just feelings of positive but negative reactions, as well.  So, I determined that the best thing I could do would be to use my very smart brain to plan my path and then stick to it, REGARDLESS of my feelings on any particular day.

It's not always an easy path.  I still feel the full range of emotions at different times.  I feel love and longing and fear and pain and more at different times, but as you make it a habit to feel the feelings, let them pass through you without a hand on your life wheel, and stay fixed on plans, it gets easier to do so as you go forward.  

So... emotional retrograde?  I didn't even notice.  I have enough things changing in my life, right now, to justify any emotional unsteadiness, but my path and plans are fixed and progressing; and knowing that gives me the peace of stability in the now and the future.

Act Don't React

There has been a lot of lessons that I have had as a focus over the last year, but one of them that has been important and different than much of my past is realizing that as you plan and guide your life, it should be chosen by logic and reason and not as much by emotion.  Also, it should be led by intention and action, rather than emotional reactions.

Indeed, I have had a lot of experience, as I am sure that many others can also testify in their lives, of making decisions based on emotional responses to things.  By that, I don't just mean angry reactions.  There has been times that I felt low and depressed or scared or more and withdrew into more safe environments.  It became a common defense mechanism to do so, and both after my first divorce and my eye surgeries I would choose to abandon my job and environment to seek family foundations.  I do not mean to say that seeking family is a bad thing.  However, let me more fully go through my examples.

In those examples, I upended my life and put myself in economically more difficult situations, and the result was having to work really hard and having less actual time to interact with family.  Further, the world is much smaller in our day than we think.  Driving hours away to visit family is just as difficult, oftentimes, as flying out to see them, and there are other ways to connect without having to be in person. 

But, to pause to note one additional point, I often found that the times AFTER difficult periods were filled with things that were just as or more difficult and the ultimate lesson was not finding a secure and safe alternative but he life lesson that I was always able to stand and thrive IN those other difficult situations, just fine.  The correct response was not to react with emotion but to get up, get dressed, keep working hard, and plan wisely.

This goes both ways, though.  And, you should not stay somewhere out of emotion or fear, either.  The difficulty of a path should not dictate your choice but what is most important for you to do for your heart and life.  So, as I prepare to move with the difficulties of my goals, ahead, I know that the things I have been doing and the direction I go is choices made in wisdom and conviction.  It is done with intention and well thought out steps, and it is ALREADY a much steadier and more prosperous change than those of the past.

So, this blog post would be to simply say that if you are feeling stresed and fearful and emotional, don't make decisions.  Take a breath.  Go for a walk.  Let the emotions drop, and then choose what path leads to outcomes most in line with your desired lifeline.

God is Good When Prayers Aren't Answered

I attended a Christian artist concert the other day, and there was a lot of good in it, and it gave me a lot of opportunities to pray and connect with God.  However, if there was one thing I would add ... one area where it could be improved in the message... it would be that they kept coming back to the theme of saying that God was good and trustworthy because of all the good He gives us and that we could stand on His word because it would result in getting what we desire and trust Him with.

I get it.  I understand that people might be lacking and want to believe in something good coming to them, instead of just bad.  But, I want to posit something for you to consider.  God is good, even when He does not give you what you desire.  I don't even mean, because something better is coming, instead... though it certainly can be.  I mean He is good, period. He is and has been in my life good in standing with me in trials, listening to me when I don't have answers and am stressed, and simply being loving in ways that doesn't result in a physical expression.  I've learned much in the times He didn't answer prayers about myself and grown in ways I could not have if I'd got what I desired.  God is god in and of the light and the darkness and helps us understand giving love and grace to those in both.

So, that's the message I wanted to post this morning.  When you find yourself like Paul and Silas chained up in some prison of life, worship, because as even that artist noted God's goodness doesn't depend on our circumstances.  I hope that helps someone, if only to know God is still there for you in prayers that go unanswered.

Florida My Home

I am three weeks away from moving back to an area that has always felt like home to me and where I have a long term history off and on for a lot of my life.  I wanted to go through several of those memories, and since this is my blog I can do that.

I have been noting on my social media 4 years in particular from 2020 to 2024 as that was a time when I most recently spent several years on my own healing from a past marriage and discovering so much about myself.  There has been several other ways of growth that I have done that have been very important in the year that came after.  However, those years were very pivotal in many ways, but I will get to that.  

My history in Florida actually began a LONG time before that.  In the senior year of my high school, my dad got a job in Florida, and we moved from Oklahoma to Florida to an area on the offskirts of Winter Haven.  I would attend Winter Haven High School and would graduate with a 3.5 GPA.  I was on the newspaper staff at that school, learned to love literature at that school, and was working during that time and years after at the AMC in the next town over, Lakeland.  At that job, I rose from usher to concession to usher trainer to projectionist and gained a lot of respect and memories at that job and among that crew.

During that time of working, I was also going to the local community college and was living with two roommates away from my parents.  It was a very defining period of my life to become myself more.  I tried different things in that time like being a model.  I was Mozart in the local paper in one gig that I did, powdered hair wig and all.  I bought a resident Disney pass and went to that a lot.  The next year, I attended Florida Southern College.  That was another developing experience.  There, I was on several social planning clubs, joined a fraturnity, was on the religious group, and was training to be a resident advisor.  I was also working as a youth director.  Actually, I was a youth director from high school years up to that point at a Methodist church.  I was selected to go to the general council for the church as part of that.  However, a death of a child in my group hit me hard, and I left the state for a period to live with my family and returned the next year.  There, I met my first wife, and we got married and had our first child.

Following that, most of the period after that was in other states and the miliary, until the late 20 tens, after the birth of our 2nd child.  In that time, I did a lot of raising of the youngest, while doing online schooling, first for being a teacher and when jobs froze up for that switched to accounting.  My degree under boht of those was religion and was done in the years that I was homeschooling our first child due to certain life realities.  Anyways, so I finished my accounting and would get hired out of the state and would not return until 2020, the period I spoke of at the beginning.  

In that period, I learned how to stand on my own as my kids were not in my house, and I learned a lot of things that I loved to do and ways of being that still resonate with me, today.  I did a lot of amazing things and had a lot of amazing experiences.  And, the very weather and ocean and such touched deep in my being and left a footprint that will remain, forever.

So, yes... I was there for  4 years a few years ago.  But, my soul has always been tied to it, and I have memories and pieces of myself left all over central Florida that I look forward to collecting, again, as I move forward to make new memories as the me that has grown from all of those yeaars and the recent ones.  Florida is my home, and I look forward to planting my roots there, again, soon.

Popcorn

When I first started cooking popcorn in a pot on the stove, I was so unsuccessful.  I was shaking the pot, adjusting the temperature, and ending up often times with a lot of either burnt popcorn or unpopped popcorn.  I felt that this shouldn't be so difficult.  So, I asked a friend for how they make popcorn, and they said that they just put the popcorn in the pot and set it at a specific temperature and walk away til it is done popping.  So, I tried that and was just like they said and taught me an important lesson.  Sometimes, less attention is more important.

It is counter intellectual, as it says that you need to take your hands off of something to make it successful, but I have found it to be so in so many aresas of our lives.  We THINK that we need to stay in control and manage everything to make sure that it comes out how we want. And, do not mistake me for saying that planning is not important. It is VERY important to be intentional in your planning, if you intend to actually get anything done.  However, the phrase that a watched pot never boils come to mind.  It is an area that I have come to understand and apply much more in my own life.

You see... life NEVER goes according to plan.  Often, it will be because you need to learn something or grow or change or adapt to new information or desires.  However, regardless, life itself requries that we change to meet it, rather than the other way around... even in areass that are leed by a desired outcome.

Hope is not specific.  It doesn't say that it must happen exactly this way and exactly this time.  Hope says that I know a general outcome, and I am very curious how it will in time manifest.  Until then, it is a wonderful, guarded secret.  But, I will say this and touch back on the other point that I watned to make from watching Spiderman Brand New Day.

You should always be you.  You should not act like you are only behaving to get an outcome.  Don't question if your actions are ok in order to please others.  BE you.  Love others.  Take the time to be the special person that you are and to do the things that are important to you.  It does not matter if that is validated from others.  There was another scene from Spiderman Brave New World where aunt May was cautioning Peter that he is a special child that has a good heart, and people will want to take advantage of that, but he should never stop being special.  It is what makes him amazing.  The Ted Lasso season finale that just ended had a similar theme at the end.  How others receive your care is not a prerequisite for actually doing it, or as I have said for years... the outcome has nothing to do with the intent.  If you love, love.  That is the end of the reward.

I don't know who might need this message, tonight, but it was driven to me to blog, so I hope it benefits, someone.  Have a good evening.

Changed

Doing a lunch break blog on a few thoughts that I had from watching Spiderman Brand New Day, yesterday.

There was a scene between the two characters when the main guy character was telling the main woman character about his love for her, after she found his letter to her that he never sent explaining how he had caused her to forget him to protect her.  After he gets done speaking his deep emotions, she says that she was grateful for what he chose to do but that she didn't love him and didn't even remember him.

I thought this was a good segwey to talk about changes that we all go through.  It is never that dramatic.  We don't lose the memories that we have of someone, memories that we should protect for the good that they were when good; but, we all change as we go through life, as the Doctor Who scene says that I have so often cited on this blog.

Indeed, I have been growing and changing a lot over the past year and feel that I am a much better person than I was a year ago and desire to continue to improve in all areas of my life.  However, in all of those changes, I am no longer the same person that I was when I was with my last relationship partner.  I am improved but also as a result different... different attitudes regarding religion, different ways of making choices, different hobby focuses, and much more.  As I reflected on that in the movie theater, I realized that she was not the same person that I knew, either, because we all grow and change all the time.  

Indeed, I have already noted this as related to how it impacts my desire to reconnect to my kids.  I love my memories with them, but my kids are different people, as I am also.  It does not change my desire or duty to be in their lives and to help them navigate through life or to experience their futures.  But, it will be as new people in both cases.

So, that is the point I wanted to make in this blog post.. well one of two but the other goes in another way and I am out of time.  So, this will do for today.  Just remember as you look to memories of care or memories of disappointment that the people in those memories likely no longer exists.  Our duty in life is not to recreate the past but to improve in the present and move towards a future of happiness and coninuous growth.  Looking back no only hinders that but is in truth entertaining present fiction.

Impact

I was looking over my stats for the week, just a few minutes ago.  In the last week, I've impacted roughly 25,000 between Facebook, Instagram, and my blog.. the blog about 15,000 of that.  I don't say that as a point of validation.  There are others whose numbers are much higher, but I periodically look over Facebook memories posts from prior years on the day and just a few days ago I was celebrating an impact that was significantly less only a few years ago.  And, truly, a much lower number is still a worthy impact on the world.

But, it leads me to draw several conclusions worthy of share to others out there, so I will go through them.

1.  Your life is not one thing.  I have learned in recent years to avoid saying things like my life sucks, my life rocks, my life is blessed, my life is cursed, etc.  Why?  Because, invariably, when one area of my life is facing a challenge it is usually accompanied with another areas of my life that is growing.  It is still important to learn the lessons from the challenges, but it is never only challenge or only joy.

2. Don't listen to what others tell you that you should be doing.  I am doing SO many things WRONG with the blog and have been doing so for a long time.. things that the experts mean would spell doom for a blogger.  I am not speaking from a degreed or authoritiative platform.  Yes, I have a degree in business, but I don't write about business.  Yes, I have a degree in the Bible, but that is probably the first time you heard about it... or most of a seminary Master's degree... because I don't reference it or claim ordination.  I just speak on needs and truths and the love of God at times.  I also question God at times, too, because I am human, and perhaps that is what people like.

3.  I haven't ever charged for the blog, and I wouldn't.  I did try to get approved for adsense, but they didn't like my content length or some things I said so was disqualified for that benefit.  However, it doesn't seem to have hurt me that much.

So, I will keep speaking truth in love, encouragement for those in need, inspiration for those that need the push to rise, and putting life in my life blog.  I hope you like it, and it seems that you do.  Thank you.